Sunita Bhosale

Sunita Bhosale hails from the Pardhi Community. She has two siblings and a mother. At the age of 22, Sunita’s mother was beaten up severely with a stone by Sunita’s father, leaving her left hand paralysed. When Sunita’s father passed away, her mother raised Sunita and her siblings single-handedly. Sunita could not continue her studies and dropped out of school in 5th grade. However, she did not get discouraged. Her goal was to do social service for her community, particularly for women. She became involved in social movements when she attended a national convention of the Pardhi community organized by the late advocate Mr. Eknath Awad. Inspired by the convention, she began participating in rallies, protests, and devoted herself to the movement. This strengthened her commitment to social change for her community.

Through the support of Manuski, Sunita has started a kindergarten i.e. Baalwadi named Parivartan to provide elementary education to children from the Pardhi and Bhil communities. Sunita set up Parivartan primarily because she witnessed a lot of discrimination against children from these two communities by teachers, who were mainly from the dominant castes. Many of these children had therefore stopped going to the government run kindergarten. She often saw these children wandering around, avoiding school. Apart from setting up Parivartan, Sunita has also been handling atrocity cases, doing fact-finding work, organising protests against the authorities, etc.

In 2010, she registered Kranti as an NGO in Pune district. Through Kranti, she identified three blocks that are densely populated with Pardhi and other marginalised communities. Kranti has a wide network with activists and organisations working for the cause, as a result of their 15 years of experience. However, funding to support social change is still a concern. The outreach of Kranti is in three blocks of Pune district of Maharashtra. Its field operations cover Dalit, Adivasi, and DT/DNT communities.